.. but their efforts are more around transmission storage and other areas. it came from other parts of the administration. >> so it would be fair to say they didn't seek any information on how this might affect electric prices for the average american family? >> the white house didn't seek any information for me -- from me. >> they didn't know they exist existed. >> i don't have y well, i don't have any additional questions. thank you for being here today. mr. chairman, without i yield back. >> the gentleman from illinois, mr. kinzinger. >> the market tend to be most

efficient in the late bigotry approach towards ruin regulations are in place given the process was in place by impacting tens of millions of consumers. it is my hope your commission will work with all parties to ensure all aspects of industry are taken into account in order to ensure current and future energy demand variable to be met. it's my understanding ferc is in the process of a holistic fashion in the set of markets in which it regulates. i appreciate the commission taking on this effort, but i have a few concerns are the cutest is to determine where the effort may lead than whether it may be unnecessarily limited. chairman lafleur, what will they do what information is currently gathering in this proceeding? >> on the capacity markets, that is very much a work in progress going on right now. i think potentially an illustrative example is what

we've done on gas electric, where we looked at a large number of comments from around the country and said, here is a large set of thing that have to be handled regionally continued to tear with each region of the country. but here's a couple cut across issues we may look at across more than one region and that may well be the future capacity market. i want to read the comments intact to my colleagues. >> have you discussed the possibility to include other also could be market the commission regulates? and is very specific reason for the inquiry of you have the capacity markets allow? >> there was a reason to limit the technical conference to the three markets because they operate in largely parallel fashion. they are more mature. the midwest iso volunteer market is considerably newer than we thought it might be difficult to do them all in one day.

there is no reason we watch in the future look at other places as well as the need arises. >> okay. a foot electric generating assets have a lifespan of 42 back 60 years. before a capacity markets organize the spam market typically operate the years ahead. lafleur and mr. norris, do you agree there's a fundamental mismatch between the investment recovery profile of electric generating assets in the way merchant markets are structured? and deeply ferc has a role to play in addressing this problem? mr. north first. in vacuuming capacity market? >> yap. >> yeah, there is a disconnect. they are designed to make shooters adequate resources to be that for the long-term future. some current capacity constructs were largely put in place to provide a revenue stream for generators are not being restructuring areas. there's been a cushion of time for that play out. we reach into the cushion now.

we've got to look at capacity markets and play a role in structuring them so long-term supply is available. >> chairman lafleur come anything to add on that? and that the reason we look at markets tc if they attract the investment we need and that includes baseload peking, intermediate demand response, all the things you need to run for it and that's is what will be looking at. >> is your commission that plans to review soho so markets are given proper signals to allow for investment decisions to be made in the power sector? >> well, that is the purpose of the whole summer pupils in part to attract for reliability. that is very much within our responsibility. >> finally, mr. clarke can begin think of federal power act authorizes ferc for a moment power over potentially cheaper or lower renewables? >> only could authorizes the

commission to subsidize such lines. i think it charges a commission was trying to make a reasonable attempt at allocating costs and a commiserate basis with cost causation beneficiary from the bowl. the seventh circuit through the course of a couple major cases is basically given us the goalpost in terms of what our responsibilities are in terms of assigning those costs. >> okay. >> thank you for your time mr. chairman. i yield back 36 seconds. and that this dynamic the gentleman from texas, mr. hall for five minutes. >> mr. chairman, thank you. commissionerscan attain an. here today. if i ask questions that shallowly or we are all trying to pass everything we can before getting to go home for christmas. i have been hearing about a new type ologies that is coming on the market. i am from texas with coors, very interested in energy. it's probably the most important

word in the dictionary for young people. they have no jobs today. if we go on this the way we go now, there will be no employers in about a year. you have a very important job. he manufactured the solution of gas liquids to make it easy to transport to the customer who then can use it as the fuel or, feedstock for electric generation, whenever they want. and told the new technology can be relatively small, simple equipment often modular move from side to side in an oilfield, which is important to capture stranded gas. mr. mckinley has an interesting pair or can be installed in existing port facility. i hope ferc can improve beneficial technologies like is not subjected at the same time an extensive review process is the major project such as lng. some of these new technologies

don't always fit the rules you have an there'll for us to fit a category. just because you are supposed to regulate them or you feel you have to regulate them, new businesses will be stifled or it will never get off the ground. i hope you'll feel you have to conjure up ways to regulate something if you haven't been told to regulate by an act of congress and that is a question that's not meant to be insulting in any way because i iru appeared to you have any history statements you want to make to what i've said so far? >> well, i believe we have to stay in our jurisdiction that has been observed several times today. we are not short of angst to do and that's what we try to do is follow the low. >> congressman, i agree with chairman lafleur. coming from north dakota where we have a significant concern with flared gas and i

understand -- >> you have a role to play. >> yeah, i understand the technology and i'm intrigued by it. i share your concern that anything we do to advance technologies allows us to capture and utilize resources is something we should take. >> we go back some 20, 25 years of some of us would then appear. if your member convoy pass clean air act and clean water act and took several sessions to do them. we breathe life into the epa in this. i remember that. even though i was a texan and believed in energy and energy paid 55% are 65% of the taxes on it was paid in texas. we felt it was very important and we breathe life into the epa by giving them a role in that act. i'm kind of sorry now we did because they acted well then can they please with what they did and without even though we were energy oriented, that the energy

people needed supervision, but they also needed help the federal government can give. so they now heard us by overregulation. that's what i was asking you about i guess. acting chairwoman, the key goal in ferc strategic plan, 2009 to 2014 cars safe and reliable infrastructure development to integrate the resources. are supported by ferc's -- have you been there three weeks eisai? >> i've been here three and a half years. i've only been in this job two weeks. >> well, you are doing very well. i thank you for the answers you get in. very supportive of ferc schools included in this plan? >> yes, i am. >> what changes would you consider on the school? to have any changes you make?

maybe you haven't had time. the other gentleman made. >> when i looked most recently, it's written in a very high-level and i think most of it is things like just and reasonable rates and robust infrastructure, which i do not think they would be any need to change. i think as i said, as we look at the current situation over the country country is, i want to meet with my colleagues and figure out if there's things we need to give mark priority two. i'll be very accountable for that, but i want to do a little bit of work before you answer if possible. >> commissioner moeller, the administrative takes away the electric industry, and reduce fuel diversity, what negative consequences which you expect? >> we just have to watch reliability very, very closely. a number of us have made

references to the natwest, but it's not the midwest and the next two years. the next two summers, very concerned about making sure we have resource adequacy. >> i'm sorry. >> i guess i will yield back then. fastmac >> we were also mesmerized by your comments that i forgot the time, to. at this time, i'd like to recognize the gentleman from nebraska, mr. terry. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i am your favorite witness, the last. mr. north, i want to follow-up with you because part of the discussion has been about a carbon price being built-in that perhaps the carbon price is based on the uncertainty of what's going to happen regarding carbon. that intrigues me what you were talking about because yesterday i was headed by a reporter that

asked me similar question about energy companies 30 sturdy to build in a carbon price. of course the question then from the reporter is what are you guys doing in congress about a carbon price? i said nothing. we are trying to artificially inflate at least the legislatively energy prices, nor overtly to attacks. so they asked the question, since there's a lot of discussion about now loathing in a carbon price, is their discussions in ferc you've been involved with or know about as an overt attempt to raise prices based on carbon? or any other sane that would in essence increase cost visa

program? >> in short, no. the reason for my comments in testimony today is to make you aware and factor in some of the change happening in the uncertainty about when or if they would be a price on carbon. >> well, i think there is some merit to the case because there's a lot of people pushing that. there's no legislative attempt. but it also breaks the next level of question with natural gas particularly in egypt had discussions about firing in north dakota. i have pictures on my iphone of that when i subcommittee took a little trip up there. so we are burning it off. we've got an ample supply. but i think there's uncertainty in that area as well based on some environmental groups and even some people on this committee that would like us to stop using the technology of hydro- fracturing.

have any of you had discussions in america the impact, any policy impacts on hydro- fracturing, how that could impact the reliability and affordability of electrical generation in the united states? let's start with the acting chairwoman. congratulations. that is a good call from the white house. i'm just looking for any call from the white house on any of the issues that asked them to talk to me about. but that's an issue for a different day. >> we don't regulate hydraulic fracturing. we've been asked in some of our papering cases to evaluate the environmental impacts upstream and downstream undertaken a pretty strong line under the national environmental policy act to just look at the hand type of the project we are certificate name.

they think is part of the discussion of fuel diversity and gas elect curt, there's been general discussion or should the rules change at any time a natural gas coming in now, we have to be alert to the because that could effect a liability. >> let's take that because one of the discussions we have with ferc in the past is coordination with ferc, particularly on natural gas with the other entities. epa, for example, reliability. how is that work going up ever when trying to get on the same page in regard to natural gas quite chairwoman. >> as part of our -- most of the discussion i been present have been about specific speeds of regulations we've discussed, mathis go forward. i sailer to discussion a regulation of natural gas, but i have not been part of the

discussion of fracturing. >> i think in reliability because there is going to be an issue that some of these plants are unable to use coal because of the new standards being produced. there will be a time when they either shut down or move to natural gas. that's going to affect reliability. i assume those discussions are occurring with the epa and other agencies so you know this is going to happen and how you're going to do with it. >> well, should there be a time when i have been a reason to believe the natural gas supply is going to be interrupted, i would certainly take heart in the discussions. >> well, this'll be more about the downtime of plants to either shut down or they shut down to retrofit. you can't get a coal fire plant and have it still running why you have a new system.

>> we fed discussions and that is one of the reasons the epa gave us among others the consultative role if the client needs more time to retrofit under the standards. >> even if you give them more time to retrofit, it is downtime during the retrofit. so we're going to have issues of electrical generation not existing in certain areas. >> gentleman status expired. i'm very sorry to say you're not going to be the last person to ask questions. [inaudible] 's >> mr. chairman? cannot make an inquiry of fuquay i didn't get a chance to ask everything i wanted to. we u.s. to leave the record open for a couple weeks the female juror questions? >> absolutely. >> the natural gas sector electricity sector. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> will have it open for 10 days of work with you to get to questions to the commissioners.

at this time, i recognize the gentleman from new york, mr. engel for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i won't take five minutes. i was here before and i had to run out. i just really had a one question. i would like to focus on the champagne has been power express. i am sure i and others have spent time speaking in the indian point nuclear power plant to new york. i'm not opposed to nuclear power and i never spoke a word about closing the plants until after september 11th when i learned one of the planes that hit the towers flew right over his power plant, which is probably about 10 miles out of my district. i believe and so does our and all the elect that officials in the surrounding area, members of congress who represent the area in westchester county think it

presents one of the most serious safety and environmental threats facing the new york metropolitan region. new york is no longer really meaning to face the threat because the champlain express to deliver a thousand megawatts per hour to the new york metropolitan reason. with the implementation of the champlain hudson power express from the security of new york's electric grid would be increased to new yorkers would no longer have to live with the dangers in their own backyard. it's obviously a benefit to new york and the safety of the arc is obviously all of our concerns. given the great benefits of the project, i really believe it is important that it is implemented in a timely manner. my only question is only in our effort to plan for a post-indian point your. i am sure that we have to make sure that we have sufficiently reliable safe energy to replace the nuclear facility. when some of us set that it

should be close, people came back with well, what are you going to do to replace it? i put the champlain hudson line replacing energy and every tear from many of you regarding the status of the project. mind share. >> thank you from mr. congressman. i believe the year ago within the past year, ferc issued an order with market rates for the champlain hudson mind that no inside the hearing of the order, so it is final. i believe this idea that the line is being done in new york state. i don't think we have anything open on the line right now. >> i think the fact that the transmission is such a good technology because it can solve a multitude of challenges going forward. i stay positive on the regional

benefits. we could duplicate that in many areas of the country. >> to answer the question. yes, echo my colleagues comments. given negotiated authority on the transmission line. i think it is a great example of the wealth of abutments but i assure electric facilities coming down from canada that made a lot of our long-term needs with low emissions -- no emissions, but also transmission will be key to making it happen. i'm very sent to dave to the decision about that plan. for also facing the close down. just a heads up, replacing those large facilities in huge urban

centers to require some infrastructure to replace it. we're going to need support and developers need support for building the infrastructure to replace this generation facilities. that's not easy to do in today's environment. >> i would concur with my colleagues and don't have anything to add. >> thank you very much. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i might make one comment in the refer to the plant in southern california and has 33% renewable mandate. i was talking to one of the ceos how one of the major utilities out there. as say build new transmission lines to bring in renewable power to where they need it, they're getting in some instances specific instructions to going underground on the transmission lines, which races are technical issues. the ceo in wrong to me that the

mileage they are going underground is costing his utility $100 million a mile. so we are talking about some costly situations in some cases. this time to recognize the gentleman from texas, mr. olson for five minutes. >> i think the chair and i assure you i'll take only a maximum of four hours -- four minutes and 59 seconds of my time. >> witnesses. chairwoman lafleur, commissioner moeller, commissioner norris, welcome, happy holidays. i have one question about the tax credit. poster with you, commissioner moeller. for the next 10 years, some wind turbine for every hour they run. this past credit was designed to kickstart renewables. and yet, it lives on despite

wind being a major part of the credit. at least 12% in my home state of texas capacity coming from wind. some markets have seen quote, unquote prices as low as negative $41 per megawatt hour as operators get the credit and run commode whether power is needed or not. granted, that's an extreme example. they can settle for a loss and taxpayers make them whole. that moves market. back home, our lack of power construction in texas, chairwoman nelson has said, this is a quote, the market distortion is caused by renewable energy incentives are one of primary causes. this makes it difficult for other generation tapes to recover costs and discourage investment in a generation.

for the ptc isn't the only driver of market distortions, it is a significant force. so start with you, commissioner moeller. do you agree in restoring energy markets? >> congressmen, all subsidies destroy markets. >> chairwoman lafleur, any comment? >> in a pure market, they would be no tax subsidies. but many of the resources to dig into the market have tax subsidies of one sort or another that are not taken into account in the market price. >> commissioner, sir. >> it will affect an open marketplace. having said that, i am concerned some of the nuclear facilities

that have been closing i'd like you never tiring because the negative night time pricing is a concern for me because the long-term stability of these low fuel in our system is important. >> yeah, we need those. >> commissioner clark. >> i would agree for the reasons you've identified. obviously the decision for congress to make whether they will be ptc are not clearly does have a market distorting impact, especially in very wind rich parts of the country and at certain times of day at certain times of the year. >> one follow-up question for mr. krantz questioned about our reliability past year in congress. yes or no, that were not there still agree it is bad policy to trap companies between two regulators with different bolstering power crazies clicks >> chairwoman lafleur. >> yes, i think it's bad policy.

you're talking about the hobson's bill quick >> yes. >> i recorded the basic principle is a d.o.e. orders you to rent from you should not be sanctioned for that in that limited instance. >> strongly, strongly support the concept, especially with what we hear about in the midwest and to some extent texas. >> commissioner norris. >> i would concur and i've been supportive in the past of the bill you and congressman doyle has sponsored. >> thank you. i yield back my 41 seconds early. >> yeah, thank you very much. we appreciate that. well, that concludes today's hearing. i would like to ask ms. lafleur one additional question. recently he was brought to my attention that ferc has a jurisdiction over a number of

lakes around the country in which hydropower is being produced in a decision affecting make of ozarks and tearing down houses in whatever in the grand lake in oklahoma. would she be about to identify for the committee the name of an individual that ferc that would have up to date information on the authority and jurisdiction you all have over these lakes in which hydropower is being produced? not right now, but later. >> yes, absolutely. >> thank you. >> without objection and hopefully you've all seen that spirit we have a letter from the american public power association, a statement they would like to insert into the record without objection. so that is centered. we will keep the record open for 10 days. there's a few additional questions would like to submit to you all. i want to thank you for coming out today and visiting with us

and for the exchange we had an thank all of you for what you are doing and continue to do in addressing these important issues. with that, that will conclude today's hearing. thank you. >> the u.s. economy added 203,000 jobs in november in the unemployment rate dropped to 7%, lowest level in five years. just after the bureau of labor statistics released its numbers this morning, house speaker john boehner issued a statement saying a prayer, quote, today's report includes positive signs that should discourage calls for more emergency government stimulus. instead, what our economy needs more progrowth solutions that get government out of the way. on the other side of the capitol, from harry reid's office, as our economy continues to gather steam coming out is not the time for washington to put on the brakes.

the actions we take in congress could make the difference between getting a job or not. and in detroit today, senator rand paul is introducing legislation to create what he calls freedom songs he said would keep money in the hands of text they are sent to the selected tree. senator powell's remarks came in a speech at the detroit economic club. >> today i'm here to introduce something that caught economic freedom songs. a bill introduced next week in washington. these freedom zones will dramatically reduce taxes and red tape so detroit businesses can grow and thrive. freedom zones are similar to an idea that kemp introduced a couple decades ago. template figure out ways to empower real people, regardless of race or family background. he called his plan a conservative war on poverty. it is time we revisit these

ideas and expand upon them. i told somebody recently, mrs. jack kemp's enterprise on on steroids. the bill introduced will introduce the use and begin economic freedoms. this bill will lower personal and corporate income taxes in detroit to 5%. my bill also lower the payroll tax to present for the employees 2% for the employers. economic freedom zones will cut out the red tape that keeps their businesses from starting an old distances from driving. inside these songs will suspend the capital gains tax, encourage greater investment in business and real estate and allow all small businesses to deduct most of what they invest in the first year of purchase. how would this differ from the traditional government stimulus? first, the zones don't ask you stand -- or they don't ask atlanta to bail out detroit. the zones free of detroit to

build themselves out. this isn't just about detroit. i'm not so concerned about my homework kentucky. we are concerned about any zip code with unemployment greater than 1.5 times the average. right now in a community in america with 12% approximately your more would be eligible for freedom zones. this could be struggling communities across america. it includes many in my homes day. there were 20 counties in the eastern part of my state in a depression right now. it's not just detroit struggling. we are struggling in my state, too. the freedom zones differ from traditional government stimulus in that no central planner, no politician in washington will decide against the money. the money will simply be left with the spiteful loner. the men are the one and who by sweat equity earned it. the freedoms on stimulus will work where traditional government stimulus hasn't worked because the government

stimulus is we've had, the money gets passed out to special interests and those who give you campaign contributions get money. it's not based whether they can do anything or run a business. those are the people that get stimulus money. in this plan, the money will stay with the people can immerse a party voted for her. the people that democratic capitalism has already run through the goblet. the people have heard he proven they can run a business. too often in government picks and losers, we lined up with mostly losers. thanks to landreth. over 500 million of your dollars was given to one of the richest men in the world. why would we be giving a loan for the middle class? why would we give a lunch one of the richest men in the world? it turns out people didn't want the solar panels. so it went out of business and we lost all the money and we are stuck with the tab. economic freedom zones won't

make that mistake. the lower taxes will benefit any business that consumers have already seen fit to endorse. only consumer tested winners would get the money. and through their success, create jobs, were jobs for the rest of us. economic freedom zones will over a ten-year period, if my bill were to pass, leave over $1.3 billion in detroit. so those who say it won't work, you won't be enough money, we have calculated it. $1.3 billion stimulus not from houston, not from atlanta, from you. it's your money. we are not going to take it to washington. we'll leave it with you. how could anybody be opposed to this quiet [applause] >> you are watching c-span2, with politics and public affairs we needs featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate.

and we knights, watch key public policy events at every weekend not action authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our website and join in the conversation on social media sites. >> senate judiciary committee chairman patrick leahy is recalled for the u.s. to shut down the guantánamo bay prison saying quote, countries that respect human rights do not walk away prisoners indefinitely without trial. he gave a speech before a group called human rights first. >> leave comment and make your way to your seat. one of the things that you will learn about human rights first at this summit is what an amazing board we are blessed with. and it is my pleasure to introduce another of its

members, jim ziegler sunday. management, finance, line academia. he is no stranger to historic moments. he started his law career at the clerk supreme court justice harry blackmun during the 1972 term on blackmun wrote the landmark roe v. wade decision. nearly 30 years later, president george w. bush appointed him commissioner of the ins. that was weeks before the attacks of september 11. he served as assistant secretary of the interior in the reagan edmonds ration ms urge annan said the united states senate. he was president and ceo of cross maps technology and is currently a senior fellow at the migration policy institute birth border control and security initiatives. as a board member of human rights first, we've been incredibly blessed with his with

an expertise of which have been invaluable to us in navigating complex political challenges. please join me in welcoming board member, jim ziglar. [applause] >> thank you, lease for that very kind and generous introduction. excuse me. it is a particular pleasure and honor for me today to introduce the keynote speaker. senator patrick leahy from the great state of vermont. if a particular pleasure because i consider pat leahy to be a good friend. and yes, for all of you out there who are doubting thomas is, it is possible for republicans and democrats to be friends in washington today. i didn't see was easy. i said it was possible.

but it is a special honor to introduce senator leahy because he is a real, honest-to-goodness champion of the cause. i think that brings all of us here today and that is human rights for everyone, everywhere. in fact, i think without reservation and i suspect a bomb in this agree, that there is no greater champion for human rights the u.s. congress then our friend, pat leahy. he is determined and indeed historic and heroic work to advance human rights is frankly too extensive for me to figure in detail and give him a chance to talk also. but i will talk a little bit about two or three of his large publicly aware competition and fear before he do that, i want to mention that i had an opportunity on the personal level to see his work up close.

as senator leahy notes come in a surge of the senate has to keep an eye on the guys. so i've observed him up close and i can tell u.s. commissioner of of the ins, if you choose to ignore pat leahy on an immigration issue, you do it at your own peril. i can tell you senator leahy does a lot of things that are below the radar screen that make a big difference in the lives of a lot of people who would otherwise fall through the cracks. he is not a show horse. he is a workhorse. pat leahy has been a longtime leader in the international campaign against land mines. in fact, in 1992, he offered the first bill of any government anywhere to be in the export of these very horrible weapons. in fact, he spearheaded the effort in congress to aid victims of landmines by creating

a special fund known as the leahy war victims fund and that fund has now, an annual basis provides about $12 million of aid to victims of these horrible bombs. in 1897, senator leahy sponsored historic legislation appropriately known as the leahy law, which prohibits the u.s. department of state department of state and department of defense from providing military aid to foreign military and police forces and engage them byerly human rights. and he never stopped bleeding on an issue central to our mission at human rights first and then his refugee protection. he is the chief sponsor of the refugee protection act, which would eliminate useless hurdles that prevent persecuted refugees from receiving safe haven. at human rights first, with also teamed up to senator leahy to fight for counterterrorism

problems -- counterterrorism policies that respect human rights. in fact, in 2009, he called for the creation of an independent commission to investigate our own government's use of torture in the post-9/11 era. unfortunately, that hasn't come to pass yet. senator leahy has a strong record of success because he is further determined pragmatist and an idealist who's less interested in making a statement in making change. frankly, he's willing and able to work with republicans on human rights and a whole bunch of other issues. for example, he and senator rubio are in the process of getting the reauthorization of trafficking victims protection act. i want to post by sharing a little secret with you. pat leahy is now the longest-serving u.s. senator and

he is president pro tem of the senate. however, don't tell them that because he thinks, and i think all of us in this room know that it's true that he is just getting started. [laughter] babies and gentlemen, i hope you will give a warm welcome to our keynote speaker, the honorable patrick leahy. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> jim, thank you all. thank you, all. jim, thank you for that wonderful and not totally deserved introduction, but i'll accept it.

should ziglar is one of the finest public servants. when he was sergeant arms of the senate, they set the gold standard for everyone else to follow after that for the best for the senate. i thought it was great to see a chance to get caught up only in our connections to vermont, but most who don't realize with a name like patrick leahy, my mother is first-generation italian-american. we compare or some other her relatives are from and the board members who made this possible. i think what you're doing is so important. in some ways we preach to the converted here. but as long visited my human rights first and lawyers for

human rights before that. what you do every day, on the research and not big has certainly been extremely important in some of the legislation that i've tried to pass. so let me talk on a few topics. partly encouraging you, don't stop. keep doing what you're doing. it may seem obvious that this is central purpose of this imac, but it needs to be said. we are here because each of us feels, each of us feels a responsibility to defend the fundamental freedoms and principles that define our humanity that we regard as universal, but which are often violated, denied by the very governments whose responsibility it is to protect them. now, we know in the history of

the united states, we have seen groundbreaking human rights leadership. we've also seen tragic failures. certainly the best i, what a monumental achievement of higher the universal declaration and the freedoms we find even the shrine today in many countries constitutions. the more recent events we see in support of the rights of people with disabilities, women, lgbt community, immigrants. these are examples of what we can accomplish to persevere against what is often long-standing prejudice this. i am encouraged by our recent efforts in congress to support those who need our help with the improvements we've made to the violence against women act, trafficking victims protection act and recently we've accomplished so far in the senate a comprehensive immigration reform.

i may say talking about the senate, i am so pleased they are going to be honoring my friend, bob dole, this evening. i was there at the time when bob was the republican leader in the senate, a man of integrity and his leadership and passage of the americans with disabilities act more than two decades ago. this would not have happened without senator dole's leadership. it's a great milestone in our human rights history. his tireless efforts to see the united states ratified the convention of the rights of persons with disabilities deserves our gratitude and praise. frankly, if we had more leaders like senator dole, leaders who are willing to put aside any kind of petty political differences as they try to find common ground for the best of the nation, then we'd all be better off.

frankly, i misleaders like that in both the senate and the house. but while we're complimenting ourselves, let's not forget a lot of examples for the united states fell short of the ideals we saw in our declaration of independence. the internment of japanese citizens during world war ii. that is really something that besmirches our history. the segregation laws upheld for years by her own u.s. report for the fact we've been unable to close guantánamo were to end mass incarceration. d's -- these are not the bright lights of our history. in fact, few days go by we are not confronted a significant challenges to stand against the global leader on human rights. some of these challenges are due

to external forces tonight knowledge that. some unfortunately due to our own mistakes. 1997 i wrote what became known as the leahy law. at that time, i had no idea what impact it might have. i thought, we will see. he was right. i did know should no longer provides equipment to poor security forces and murder innocent civilians. you think this is something we could easily all agree upon a americans. it happened many times where we've given it to her country to murder and torture their own citizens. that was wrong. it contradicted everything this country stands for. but it also undermined our standing as a global defender of human rights for people to say, look what your age is doing in this country.

under the leahy law, which would cut off that aid is the most effective tool we have for drawing a clear line between the united states and those who commit shot cities, but also providing an incentive for foreign governments to hold abusive military and police officers accountable. the law has been allowed for a decade and a half. some officials in our embassies have not enforced rigorously. i call in our state department to ask lane the leahy law is the leahy law is the leahy law and has to apply in every country where we give aid or it is turning our back on american ideals. let's start enforcing it everywhere. [applause] don't give any excuse to somehow were going to make it better.

we keep giving aid to the people using it to torture. no, that violates everything we stand for as americans. if you're going to implement the leahy love, you have to have tuesday and participation here and around the world and everybody in this room. you know, we should feel just as strongly about defending human rights act is, whether they are in egypt or russia, sri lanka, china, vietnam or any other country or persecuted for their religious beliefs. these are priced the americans take for granted. the rights for which we take great pride. we shouldn't hesitate to speak up when those rights are violated anywhere, our country or anywhere else. i've met some activists come as many of you have, who have been sued yet did to brutality,

isolation, torture. i've got to tell you, i am awed by their courage, their spirit. i am awed by the fact they'd never get out. we have a responsibility to support them. when were in prison they set a land party labels and work for their release. here at home, we've yet to fully recover from the effects of the 9/11 attacks and we do remain vigilant against the threat of future attacks. we should not ignore the damage done by some of the open seat practices and policies put in place after 9/11. before 9/11, i doubted any of us could imagine the torture.

something members of congress in both parties are condemned when used by repressive government would be defended by top u.s. officials as legitimate actresses of the 21st century. we must never again allow torture by our country to be in euphemisms like enhanced interrogation techniques that are justifiably twisted and applied legal analyses that is totally contrary to the moral core of our country. we should put an end to the indefinite detention of suspected enemy combatants and the use of flawed military commissions and open-ended ill-defined global war on terrorism. we have spoken out so many times about indeterminate detention in other countries, how come i justified in our own?

frankly, there is no justification. [applause] icl, and i said this to various presidents, that the indefinite torture prisoners at guantánamo has contradicted our most basic principles of justice. it has degraded our international standing as a champion of human rights and rather than helping our national security, it is actually harming it. countries that respect rule of law and human rights do not walk away prisoners indefinitely without trial and without charge. we should not authorize it in our country. i am heartened by the incremental positive changes this year's senate's version of the defense authorization bill.

we have to do more to ensure that guantánamo is closed. i greatly appreciate the human rights first advocacy close wonton about. let's remove this blanket. [applause] and continue your work on the question of drowns. i didn't drowns could be used in armed conflict, but only in accordance with international humanitarian laws. the united states for years conducted lethal operations using drones in pakistan, afghanistan, yemen, some of which have killed or wounded innocent civilians in the population. i remain very concerned about the lack of transparency surrounding these operations. these signatures strikes. he raises a very serious question whether drones comply

with the humanitarian law that we joined in and will continue this precedent for the rest of the world, including other countries. we have to be as transparent as possible about whether they are used following international law. in fact, i would suggest here today that maybe it's time to look again at international law in this area. maybe it's time to have some tightening in changes. i for one would like to see that. so, you know, i never hesitate to criticize foreign governments to allow heinous crime go unpunished or other fundamental rights. so too, i criticize my own

government. repeals lived up to the standards we demand of others and what others expect of us. let me use one area. when we think of the international treaty landmines. i think of the continuing trend of innocent civilians becoming victims of war because the vast majority of people harmed, injured, killed a landmines are not combatants. they're innocent civilians, children, parents, mothers. the mine treaty to ban the use. every single nato country have signed it. that one most powerful nation on earth, the united states. that's not the leadership i expect my government. clinton, the george w. bush in the obama administration have not joined an isolated this

issue. i asked what kind of message to this than the rest of the world and this lack of leadership. we had to just sign it. we spend hundreds of millions of dollars are moving landmines around the world. we as the leahy war victims fund to help landmines that comes around the world. what are we afraid of? we have another leahy law that says we can export landmines. it only takes a little bit to go forward and signed a treaty like everyone of our our allies has done. is that so difficult? conclusion, let me tell you another number 22nd, remember the great laws this country suffered 50 years ago when president kennedy was assassinated. as i drove down here, remember

my wife and i as a young law student standing right here on this corner, watching hundreds of thousands of people on the street. it was so silent you could hear the drums when the cortège left the white house. you could actually hear the click in the street that says they changed and you could hear the horses in the drums as they came up pennsylvania avenue. i've been thinking about that a lot in the last two days. marcel and i have talked about it a lot and what it felt like as to john's there's an inner. and i thought of when he president kennedy said in his memorable and not girly dress, the willingness to permit the slow undoing of those human rights for which this nation has

always been committed into which we are committed today and around the world. that's what john kennedy said in that inaugural address. 53 years since then, i believe his words are even more relevant today. i would argue among what you ask us to do back then is to continue to reaffirm and uphold that commitment in doing so, we help the rest of the world. frankly, the american people expect no less. my children and grandchildren expect no less. keep on working on this and i'll be there to fight with you. thank you very much. [applause] >> next week, lawmakers try to wrap up legislative work before the holiday recess.

we spoke about next week's legislative agenda with the congressional reporter. ..

shutdown unemployment benefits need to be a part of the discussion. why is that command might that be an item that is a hurdle for them to getting the deal done? >> the unemployment insurance extension that allows people to receive benefits expires after the week after christmas. pelosi along with several democrats want to see that extended another year. right now what's not being included in the deal is pressing very hard for it to be on that piece of legislation. he brought to the door open and said he would be open to having another extension that this point they figure out how to get it done or even if it's going to get done. >> what happens if they can't reach a budget agreement by the end of the great? >> there is no repercussions immediately. the government stays open and keep functioning. they have until january 15 to find another way to keep the government funded beyond that deadline.

we see the negotiations between bipartisan groups as well as the leadership in the white house stepping in. >> we know they've been working on the farm bill. can we expect to see votes on that next week? >> they are trying to come back together. they could reach eight deals next week. it's like a race between the farm bill and the conference committee trying to get something done. that a deal is going to take a lot of bringing people together. a lot of working to try to find the votes necessary to pass it. and whether or not they vote on that next week is still unclear. >> before the break the senate was working on the defense authorization bill. how are those negotiations going? >> they thought that they were going to vote on that in a senate and they've announced on monday that they will be addressing the status of the negotiations it doesn't seem like they will happen before they leave for christmas break. it could drag into the new year but it's something they are still negotiating on both sides to try to get a vote on it.

>> width of the filibuster changing because the nuclear option, with judicial nominations could we expect to see in the senate before the holiday break? >> there's three nominees to the dc circuit court in the most powerful court in the country because it deals with disputes between the executive and the legislative branch. three of the nominee is expected to move in the senate flexed week. senator harry reid said he's going to bring those were votedg about what the filibuster rules have been changed and they don't require 60 votes it will be very quickly at the beginning of the week through the senate. >> congressional reporter for politico, thanks again for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> now a conversation on genetics and the law. from the tenth circuit bench and bar conference is an cozy a syt four and six sick science in the kumble justice system. from colorado springs colorado, this is an hour and a half.

>> with experience with the microphone -- okay. how's this? great. good morning everyone. it's a pleasure to be here today i would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to come to this beautiful place i would like to talk with you this morning at hank mentioned we would start with a very basic review of dna. what is dna, how does it work and why should you be interested in it. our focus on an important intersection between the dna and the law and that isn' is a diffe of genetics, genetics conference of applications and illustrate some of the points that with the case studies in which the dna has been used in for the

context. so, our body is a marvelous collection of about 100 trillion cells. and inside almost all of these cells in the nucleus of the cell's here we can find dna. the dna is organized among chromosomes. we absorb these under a microscope and if we look three closely at these chromosomes, we see this double helix structure, the classic structure of the dna molecule. a long are these bases and it streams of those bases that compose genes. we have about 21,000 genes and each encodes a component of our body or protein or enzyme. we see this sequence as the

body's instruction manual. it's the manual for the human body. so, i will show you a little bit of sequence. you can't read this. this is about 3,000 bases, dna bases. very tiny proportion of our total dna sequence. in fact each has about 3 million dna-based ayers. what i'm showing you here is roughly 1 million of the human genome coming into the genome as our entire dna base sequence. so, if i were to show you a picture like this, one out of every second it would take me about 12 days to show the entire human genome. that is the entire amount of information we are looking at when we try to sequence a whole human genome. that is one of the goals today and human genetics to provide whole sequences of humans and of others as well. that sequence allows us to understand more about our predisposition to disease like

heart disease shown here. what about 90% accuracy if i have the dna sequence i can predict your eye color. so if we have for example a blood sample from a crime scene, we can predict certain physical traits with some degree of accuracy for the dna sequence. for a long time to bury yours to chain the sequences was cost. the slide shows you the cost of the first human genome sequenced in 2003. the cost of the human genome project waproject was about $3 . that's a lot of money. this helps put into perspective in genome was sequenced at the cost of $100 million. when we started sequencing the human genomes in 2009 the cost of come down to $25,000 because of technological developments. as of the end of last year, it

was about down to three or maybe $4,000 to sequence an entire 3 billion base of genome. so, that represents a millionfold decline in price in less than a decade. and i don't think there's any other technology that could boast that kind of a decline in cost and so little time. now for about the cost of an mri, we can get your entire dna sequence. and unlike the mri results come in your sequence will change. so this gives a tremendous amount of information about each and every human who is sequence and now tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are being sequenced in various mostly biomedical studies. i will mention the very first human family i'm happy to say the very first human family to be completely sequenced is a family from utah. in fact happens to be my wife and her children. so, for me we had an exercise in personal genomics.

that turned out to be very fulfilling. so, occasionally in our dna sequence, here is the sequence shown on this slide, the double helix, the bases occurring in pairs and occasionally an alteration occurs and this is what we call a mutation. it turned out i turns out in sot we learn in sequencing the family. how often do these actually ocher? each time we reproduce we transmit about 30 new mutations to our offspring. most of these are in the 99% of dna that means it doesn't actually make proteins, structural components in the body, but occasionally these notations do affect the gene so that they can actually cause disease. but this is a great quote from lewis thomas who said the capacity to blunders likely come of it is to mutate come is the

real marvel of dna without the special attorney to do still be at anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music. [laughter] >> that is a wonderful quote because it tells us that the introduction of the genetic variation this is what allows us to adopt a changing environment. this is what gives us the wonderful physical diversity that we see in a roomful of people like this. so although these mutations can cause disease, they also allow us to adapt. we should be thankful for them. some of thso, the natural questt comes up in this context is how much do we do for? of these mutations are happening every time we reproduce, how much variation is there among humans? if we look at identical twins, these are nature's clones. identical twins differ at essentially zero dna bases. but isn't quite true, but it's close enough. they are identical at a dna level. if we look at on related humans, do i have any guesses as to how much an unrelated pair of humans

differs at the dna level? one in what? well it's not very much. one in a thousand. so, after the dna level, the most fundamental unit of our biology we are 99.9% identical. here's an important message right there. if we compare ourselves to the nearest biological relative, the champ, we are 99% identical to the champ. this is the dna sequences that we can actually line up and compare it to compare ourselves to the mouse, we differ at about a sixth to one third of her jeans for most we are as you would expect more different from mice and think of this if you compare us to brocolli we are mostly different from brocolli at the dna level. but we have 3 billion bases even if we are 99.9% identical, that means that there are 3 million differences on average between

each pair of humans. now that's important because that provides the basis for the forensic identification. each of us is genetically unique unless we are an identical twin. there are roughly three to 4 million differences between individuals and that means that there are at least two to three billion power of these differences. in other words, assuring that all of us are genetically unique. the implication then is it enough genetic radiation is tested, each of us could be uniquely identified and rebuilt. we don't need to look at every difference we just need to look at a subset of these differences is found in nearly all cells of the body and blood, hair coming even quite often in fingerprints we can actually get sufficient dna for analysis.

that means that the dna from an evidentiary sample can be compared with dna from the suspect either to implicate or exonerate the person and that is what i will be talking about now for the next several minutes. now we have some celebrated example of dna identification. when saddam hussein was a man they thought was that saddam hussein was first captured, one of the questions was this really saddam hussein or was this a decoy? welcome the dna had been extracted from his two sons earlier that year. in a dna profile was created from the suspected saddam hussein compared to his two sons and there was a match between the sons for a number of dna locations helping to prove that this was in fact saddam hussein. just last month, this article was published where the last victim of the boston strangler

dna was identified on the victim who could be traced through a family member to albert, the man accused of being the boston strangler but was killed in prison before he was tried on the sturgis. and of course, we have a famous example, the world's most famous navy blue dress, the one on which a dna sample turned that he said she said case into a presidential impeachment. so dna evidence has served a very important role in a number of high-profile cases and in everyday crime as well and i will talk more about that. so, what are we actually talking about when we try to identify people from their dna are we illustrating that here? here is part of the sequence, and what you see is part of the sequence cag a is reported all over again and that is why it's

called a tandem repeat and it's a short one. it's only for bases. the important thing is these repeats tend to vary in their number from individual to individual. so, on the copy of state chromosome five that i got from my mother i might have five repeats on the copy that i got from my father i might have to repeats. if we look at this dna we might see him six copies on his paternal chromosome and four copies on his maternal chromosome. that means if you compare his dna with mine he would be able to tell them apart based on the number of these repeats at a specific location in the genome. and here are some specific locations. these are the 13 code as loci, these are the short tandem repeats that are typically used in forensic applications. and you can see they are on different chromosomes that helps to ensure that they are independent of each other.

that is an important property. we will talk about that in a minute. suppose we want to look at a couple of these. we can label them with a blue and a green label here. and then, what we have to do is make lots of copies of just that little piece of the chromosome that has that repeat. and we use a technique called pcr. this is a pcr machine in my lab so what we would do is take dna from an individual. we would load it into the sheen, and what comes out of our dna fragments just the ones of interest, just to the ones that contained contain the repeat weo examine, and importantly from individual to individual, the sizes of those fragments are going to be different. they are going to be different in length because of this variation in the short tandem repeats number. now, to assess those sizes, we use a process called electronic

paresis. we take the products from five individuals, we loaded them into a gel like this. we apply an electrical current to the joe and what happens is that the shorter smaller fragments, the ones that have fewer repeats tend to migrate through war quickly. if they are smaller they can wiggle through this very rapidly. if they are larger if takes longer to get through. and we can start to see patterns. so these are five different individuals, five different patterns. these are two different locations, so these are two different st ours and you can see there is a lot of individual variation in the pattern of these str's links. so, let's take an example. here, we have several dna samples that we are going to load into the gel. we have a victim's dna can and n evidentiary hearing sample and suspects. we are going to look at four

different str's. here are the possible outcomes. we might find that suspect one would crime scene on , suspect a suspect three and none of them left retrievable dna at the crime scene. multiple suspects they have left dna or the data could be inconclusive. so, we take our dna samples from the victim, from the evidenc evn cheery sample and from three suspects were then into the gel to be those are the pcr products appear. we left them run and we look at patterns. does anyone see a match between the evidentiary area sample and any of the suspects? shout out if you see which suspect matches the evidentiary sample. >> one. >> number one, that's exactly right. so that's essentially what we do. we look for a pattern match between the evidence here you

sample and any one of the suspects. now if you were looking at a crime lab report you would get something that looks like this, and this is a centrally but i showed you turned on its side, and this -- each peak represents the position of one of those fragments that i just showed you here to read this is the smaller ones coming here are the larger ones and we are looking at ten different strs all at once and these are two samples. and evidentiary area sample, suspect samples. this -- and what we look at are the positions of the peaks. for example, for the 16 here and the 16 here would you say this is a match or not? >> no, it is not a match. this is an exclusion. these are in different locations. so what we take you through a case study to illustrate how we use this in real practice. this was a case that was actually my first dna case back about 20 years ago. michael scott was accused in a homicide case in salt lake city.

there was no dna evidence in a homicide case. he was identified ultimately through a fingerprint on a piece of duct tape. but he was also accused of the rate of 214-year-old girls in salt lake city. there were semen samples from the rape so the question was does the dna from the evidentiary area sample matched the suspect. so come at that time the crime lab was using what are called rflp. the same principles i just showed you a plight here. so, what we have loaded into this gel we have the victims dna and we have the defendant and then we have three samples from the evidentiary area sample loaded at different concentrations. here is the highest concentration, so here is the pattern in the defendant and here's the pattern in the evident cheery sample. is this a match or not? what do you think?

i see some heads nodding. and this was by the criteria established at the time a match. so is this sufficient to put him in jail? to convict him? probably not because we have to ask the question how common with this profile be in the general population. so we do some statistics that i will talk about. we estimate that the frequency of this profile in the population of european ancestry is about one in 50. so come it is useful evidence, but certainly not convincing enough to establish the identity of that evidentiary area sample. so, we look at another repeat system at another chromosome location. so come use our defendant, here's our evident cheery sample. is that a match or not? gas. if a match. so, again, we ask how frequent is this profile in the general

population in our reference population. it's about one and 70. now we have two pieces of information one with a frequency of one and 50 in the general population and another with a frequency of one in 70. we can take those two pieces of information and multiply them together to say what is the likelihood that someone has both this profile as well as the other profile, one 50th of 170 is, one in the 3503 is now we have more information. we looked at a third system. there was again a match. the estimated frequency of that profile was one in 90. a fourth system, again, showed a match and in this case, the suspect got the same length of tandem repeats from both of his parents. the frequency of that is about one in ten. so, now we can take all four of those frequencies.

we multiply them together. we say how often would someone in the general population has the first profile, the second one, the third one and the fourth one, and that turned out to be about one in 3 million. so at that time, this was early on, the crime lab was using four of the systems, but this gave an overall probably a someone else in the general population having this profile of about one in 3 million. so, that along with other evidence in the case was sufficient to convict him of the rapes of the two teenage girls. he was also convicted of the homicide and he is now serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. so this just shows several cases that i've been involved in over the years. a year after the case, this was a multiple rape case. jason higgins was accused of eight women rapes and the size

of these systems come attend ann repeats in the reference population so we could look at five and at that point, the probability that someone else had that same dna profile had gone to one in 400 million just with the addition of an extra system. by 1999, we were using the pcr base that i talked to him again this was a rape case, and in that case with nine of the systems, putting all of that information together, we had a random match probability of one in 215 billion. one of the questions the prosecutor asked after that was after i presented that figure was then how many people are there on the face of the earth and that gives the jury be idea that it's pretty unlikely that anyone else would have that same profile. the important thing here is the pattern as we incorporate more information and the probabilities tend to get smaller and smaller. this case was a little bit exceptional because in this

case, the defendant was a member of the population for conservative assumptions have to be used in estimating the probability. but, as you can see, we can get down to some very small probabilities here. in the case of the worlds most famous navy blues riffs, the probability was one in a trillion. now dna evidence can be used not only to implicate the guilty that it can also be used to exonerate the innocent. this was a case i worked on a few years ago where bruce goodman had been accused of the murder of a former girlfriend. he spent 19 years in prison. his white chromosome dna was examined finally come and it was an exclusion. so, as of this month, 300 convicted americans have been exonerated by this kind of post conviction dna testing. and it's interesting that on average they spent 13 and a half years in prison. eighteen of them have received the death penalty, and in about

half of these cases not only did he dna evidence excluded them, it identified the actual perpetrator. now, there are issues of course that come up in dna analysis. dna is not magic. it can be altered. it can be inaccurate. so, the kinds of questions that we have to address our chain of custody, was there a potential for dna contamination, was the data analyzed appropriately and interpreted accurately? the reference population where we get the frequency estimations is that the appropriate population, is it sufficiently matched for ancestral backgrou background? and i think this is another important question. is the expert witness really an expert in the area under consideration plaques so, today, dna evidence is used routinely and tens of thousands of kernel

cases every year. the database now contains dna profiles of more than 12 million americans most of them are convicted offenders but there are also other arrestees in a database of people involved in missing persons investigations and so forth. from the database, something that is fairly controversial is trolling the database when you have an evidentiary area sample to see if anybody in the database matches it and has been used now in more than 200,000 criminal investigations so, the use of this kind of evidence is becoming increasingly common even for example in everyday property theft, burglary dna testing is sometimes used at a cost of around one to $2,000 per case. so there are a number of interesting ongoing developments in this field. it is possible to estimate at least approximately the ancestry

of a contributor of the dna sample. this is another controversial area. but it has been used in a number of investigations now. you take a dna sample and you try to figure out the ethnic background of the person who contributed that. we can come as i mentioned earlier, predict certain physical features. there is a specific gene called mc1r with about three variants and i can find and detect about 90% of people who have red hair. this is sometimes referred to as the red hair gene. we can predict eyecolor accurately and about 90% of cases. we can even with a blood sample estimate age. although it's very approximate, it can give us some idea of the age of the contributor of the blood sample. and people are working on rapid detection. rapid dna type at the crime scene. so a lot of very interesting

developments. developments that involve both science as well as i think the legal profession, helping to decide which of these development are appropriate. how can we best use them. so, one of the things i always really enjoye enjoy about talkio groups of judges is that you have, this group has the collective wisdom to help figure out how we can use this information, use this information to its best possible purposes and of course to avoid any potential harmful outcomes. so, i would like to thank you for your attention this morning. i would be happy to address any questions. [applause] the time for two or three questions. please, cut to the microphones in front. and remember, you will be immortalized on c-span.

>> [inaudible] -- tell you where you came from and what your future possible medical problems are. how accurate are those predictions and is it worth the money click. >> okay. that's a great question. the question was about so-called direct-to-consumer testing where you send a saliva sample into a company, they type your dna using what we call a dna chip and you get back a lot of information. information about your approximate ancestry and about your risk for a number of disease conditions. it's important that the companies always refer to this as recreational genomics. they don't claim that these results have sufficient accuracy for certainly biomedical applications or diagnostic

purposes. but they give you -- and i did send mine off to one of the companies and it was quite interesting to get the results back. the charge at that time was $400. i think some of them now are down to $100. so, if you i think take it with a large grain of salt it's kind of fun. but where i think it gets problematic is really with the diseases that we are most interested in, things like diabetes, heart disease, common cancers, because they will give you some risk information for those conditions. the problem is we in the genetics community have not identified most of the genic -- genetic causes. so they've sent different they s and have gotten it different risk results in just depending on which particular test those companies happen to use. so, i would take it with a grain of salt. it's kind of fun, but it is ultimately recreational.

sometimes then a criminal cases those accusations that when you collect a sample from a suspect that that is a sample that somehow is then taken and claimed to be the evidence sample. so, my question is is there a difference between -- are you going to find the difference between the evidence sample and the collective sample, and if there really was too much similarity with a ba suggestion that there actually has been some contamination of the collective sample with the supposed evidence sample clocks. >> okay so the question was if you are comparing an evidentiary area sample collected at the crime scene with a sample that you've taken from a suspect, could there be suspiciously a greater semblance between them such that that might suggest

contamination. >> yes. >> typically what we see when we see a match if all 13 for example of those core strs are successfully typed, all 13 of them are going to match, and that would not -- tha but is not really a surprise. i think what is important here is a very accurate accounting of the chain of custody, the whole sequence of collection events. and there have been contamination issues sometimes due to loud errors and sometimes because of cross contamination at the crime scene. and there are several now well-known cases in which the dna evidence turned out to be incorrect. sometimes because of a contamination and sometimes because of this interpretation of the results. we think that rate in general is very low. but it has been known to happen.

we will all have another chance for q-and-a with the overall panel at the end of the session. the next speaker shannon is on her way up. we are moving from genetics to anthropology but staying in the area of forensics. shannon will talk about her area of great expertise. what we can learn from bones and other remains. as soon as we found the right powerpoint. >> thank you to the organizers for inviting me to speak today i i feel and anthropology section come everyone is talking about the dna. but i'm delighted to be here. and what i want to do is use the wonderful setup that lynn gave

us of the genome into the genotype, that amazing, simple code in our body that manifests in such interesting ways but then let's move out in the scale to actual body is putting those genes into bodies and the interface between the genotype and what we actually see, how they express themselves as they interface with the environment, as they interface with individual's behavior and with historical changes over time. so, though professor talked to you about you may have a gene that can predict hair color and eye color there is so much that we don't understand about those genes and how they come to express themselves.

and this takes us into the domain of anthropology and trying to put those antibodies that have a long evolutionary history and looking at them across space and through time so again by anthropology, this wonderful discipline that allows us to not only consider cultural behavior, but the physical environment and the physical body itself and how that has changed over time and across the space. it's one of comparison and looking at a variation and again across time and space. so what you will see is we will move from different biogeography is, people using different

places, but also through deep time to look at those changes that have taken place. we are talking for three, 6 million years ago. we can study those soft tissues and those bodies that we see around us although the genome is helping us to understand about time. so what we do is we turn to the skeleton man of the human remains. many of us that are biological anthropologists study human remains in the heart tissue that is left over and the bear are a variety of different subdisciplines. so the payload anthropology or payload anthropology. they are looking up little bits

of bone and what it can tell us about our extinct ancestors and again, what the age and how they interacted with their environment. also, the evolutionary relationships between each other. more recent work on this good little remains, more recent history that's usually dealing with anatomically modern that an archaeology. and this is what i train in. i was particularly interested in a small group called the fremont livethat lived in the great basn about a thousand years ago. and i was interested in the people that lived in the margin of the complex society and what it was like to live in the countryside and the interaction in particular between the groups and within households. so i was particularly interested in the gender relations and in the collective violence between

groups. physical anthropology in dealing with soft tissue and working people and looking at just how our modern environment and how that is affecting growth, the changes in the phenotype. but they are still interested in the underlining skeleton. and folks that work with living people have actually been called into the frantic work for recently. in particular, to look at the age of individuals that may be involved in immigration and deportation issues so that phenotype is interesting. and then what we are here today for firms that. and this is a new little category on this chart -- using this chart to teach for years and years and forensics has been added to the chart. and in part because then doing part to the popular culture obviously all of the crime shows that have been on television but

also to current events. and hearing about the mass graves and the analysis of these remains that are coming from the mass conflict have started to make their way into the public perception of the kind of work that we do behind the scenes. so, what is frantic anthropology class so from all of the forensic anthropologists because they haven't quite decided on what they are yet. it is a new subdisciplines within the physical anthropolo anthropology. they specialize in just dealing with medical legal issues and contemporary events so the folks at j. pack those are individuals that are working in hawaii on

the recovery service men and their remains they employ a number of anthropologists. the fbi employees must anthropologists in place by the medical examiners. and there are few and far between. the students are coming racing in trying to get these jobs and really there aren't that many. but a couple of you up here if you want to look more at how they are trying to define what turns anthropology should be taught the american board of the frantic anthropology and trying to come up with standards for the data that is collected most folks are involved in the frantic anthropology these days and in the past half an application of the work so they are called in. the kind of research that we do have applications to the medical

legal context. so most of us are minding our own business and doing research in the lab's and the medical examiner will context us and we are caught in human rights work more and more. this is due in part to the unique training that we have of anthropologists. most of us are skilled in locating clandestine graves, surveying for them, recovering remains, creating the biological profiles from those remains and it is a special thing that we can be of some use to the medical examiners. so now, the good parts that you get to look at. the kind of remains we often work with, we are again working with complete skeletons of times other forensic specialists or applied for in six remains

within their context, maintaining control of artifacts or evidentiary retraces whatever they may be. we are also very skilled in working with very fragmentary remains to appear with bone marrow or severely altered remains. here you see a severely burdened individual and it's in fragments. and again, whether this is something recovered from an archaeological site or the frantic context we used many of the same different skills. more and more we are being drawn into the severely decomposed remains or damage remains from mass disasters. this is from the former yugoslavia, which i will talk about my work over there just a little bit today to show you how

things that we've learned in archaeological context are applicable to the more recent mass killings and disasters. okay. so whether we are again the specialists or dealing with the applications of forensic techniques, we start by building a more biological profile of the individual whether it's that wonderful complete skeleton in the grave, the fragmentary or the mostly decomposed and trying to understand who that individual is. so, we create something called the biological profile where we ask a series of nested questions moving from putting them in big categories of individuals as large as is it bone and is it human, and that may seem a bit silly, but 30% of our work is estimated to be it's not even bones. rocks come in a lot and it's not

human. bear claws look like human hands and they come in always after hunting season. so, much of our work is just saying no, you don't have to worry about this. how many are there? again, with co- mingling, trying to remove evidence of a body or multiple bodies, sorting out how many folks were in their is something that we are used to doing in very small fragments. then remove sex, age, ancestry of the individual and i put little stars by where the dna is helping these days and inslee. that is if we can get dna out of the college in and out of the bone if it isn't too degraded or if we are allowed to take samples -- some of the cases are native american graves protection and repatriation act and descendent populations don't want to samples taken from their remains. so if we can, wonderful, and we

have this great working relationship that helps us. so now that we put our individuals into these broad demographic categories, now we try to pull them out and individualize them. what's unique about their lives that tells us something about them. so, disease and activity markers. this individual you can see has had some extensive dental work and we work with for in six dentists all the time. but it may tell us a bit about what kind of food they were eating, the kind of quality of dental care that they have, trauma. you can see that there's an exin exit wound above his left eye with a large radiating fracture so this is going to tell us a bit about how he met his demise. and then marks on the bow in the about postmortem events. was the body moved, was it

buried in one context, had it been moved to other contexts, what animals have bought into it, how had the environment altered that bode. if we are working in contemporary events, ideally a positive identification. and once again, this is where the dna really allows a positive identity in the name for the person to be found. in the prehistoric context we don't have those names. all right. so what i want to turn to for the remainder of the talk is that area of trauma. it's an area that forensic anthropology or biological anthropologists i think of a lot to contribute to the medical legal system and certainly the reason i've been pulled into cases is because my interest started, once again, with looking at violence in the past,

warfare in the past as well as gender conflict that left its marks on the bones. and there's a long history of studying trauma and anthropolo anthropology. we've been interested in human ancestors when they first started to use stone tools and cuts me off of bones, when they start to break bones open. so actually, doing experimental work, looking at the small marks on fragments. it's something there's a long history and an apology and paleoanthropology. there's also been a long interest in violence. how far back does collective violence go in warfare? can we really see the conflict between individuals and groups? how does it change when we get different settlement patterns, how does it change when we get different kinds of weapons? and so this is a finely honed

the skill i would say that has great application. so, the understanding of trauma is based upon the biomechanics of the bone. we are able to predict a fair amount about how the vote will fracture. it's a wonderful composite material. it's both rigid and flexible bowl because it is made of organic and inorganic materials. and so, it allows a great deal of flexibility. but at certain points it fails. so, we understand how it feels under tension and under compression, certain amount of pounds per square inch. and this is what we use to understand the fragmentary nature of what we are seeing in the trauma and in about an. the other questions we ask about are the timing of the event. and i'm not going to talk much about anti-boredom trauma. but anti-more than trauma is interesting, and these are the wounds have healed.

these are for biological profiles. so it helps if we have an individual that has red fractures were i or in the cases individual, she has a well healeheeled up nasal fracture os line right here with a broken nose and you can see how smooth the bone is in the area. it's well healed. she survived whatever it was that broke her nose. so this is one of our prehistoric freedom on females that i was interested in and gender violence. perry more than trauma that occurred close to or at the time of death so there was no chance for the healing to take place. and then postmortem events. how do we distinguish between what was. more than trauma and what was same wrote in, carnivores, insects, plant roots? we then also can start to distinguish the types of classes of weapons.

was it a sharp force within, a blunt force within or projectile type of weapon? and how quickly was it coming in? so again, these of elastic and plastic properties of the bone, the faster it with incomes and come it doesn't allow the bone to recover in that the last x. days -- elastic phase. so, these areas are fairly predictable about the fracture. the problem comes in when we are looking at intrinsic and extrinsic properties of bones. are we looking at a round sphere such as the head or long tubes such as the long bones or flat such as the hip. those have different biomechanical properties and the physics will change. the underlining structure. the age of the individual. someone who is frail and using bone density is going to fracture in a way very different than say a toddler that has lots

of collagen and their bones. the sex of the individual bone density and health of course alters that underlining does structure. and covering and protection. even the amount of hair on the head has been shown to influence how that weapon can penetrate and alter the fracturing of the bone. and of course being human, learning to protect ourselves and how it will alter and how we can predict. so, when i was first asked to give this talk and i had a 25 minutes int and the judge mathen has heard this talk in a variety of different forms i always had 80 minutes, this wonderful lecture. so of course i'm going to get rid of all of my historic cases and judge matheson said zero no but i love how the history cases. so, the more i thought about it the more i thought this illustrates really nicely how we hone our skills in working in

cases that are prehistoric or historic in context, how we bring those skills into moore's medical legal cases, and in many ways how what we learn from those in the forensic context actually help us to go back to these historic and prehistoric cases and understand trauma to interpret what we are seeing better. so it's this wonderful process and ability to work in both of these worlds. we are learning in both contexts. so the battle illustrates a couple now a couple cases of violent interpretations. it's a really nice one to be about to illustrate to you what sharp projectile trauma looks like before we take it to a more recent setting. the battle from 1461 was

supposed to have been one of the bloodiest battles on english soil. it was a battle of the lords of the roses, the long-running civil war and it occurred on palm sunday in 1461 and purportedly 100,000 men were on the field and some 20,000 killed as the most battle numbers are probably exaggerated, but we do know that there were thousands of men killed that day. when i was doing my dissertation work on domestic violence in england, the university i was working with at bradford got called in to excavate a massive grave and folks that were expanding the garage on their manor house unearthed this as they were excavating and out into there were 39 individuals

that had extensive trauma, they were combing gold. you can see that sorting of these individuals out was quite a challenge. but we had wonderful folks that worked with excavation and gprs you can see the mapping on the side. of course we always have to understand our social and historical context that we are dealing with and this is the medieval wound, this is from the surgeon's guide. you can see we have the sharp force trauma blunt with hammers and projectiles into soap we knew we could be looking for a variety of different wounds. here's a good example of the sharp force trauma. this individual had a broadsword that went through his left eye, through his nose and down into the mandible.

it gets any wonderfu is been a r us to be able to say that the type at least sharp force trauma and the kind of believe that we can see. blunt force is more difficult to see. it's more nondescript although it gives us these mice radiating fractures, both radiating and circumstantial because we know the biomechanics that give us a bull's-eye. some blunt force if it's very localized we get some nice shapes such as these mice squares and doing the wounded profiles, we are able to see that these were the top five from a pool asked that were used probably as finishing blows. this individual had multiple injuries come and these holes are in the top of the head. not too many projectile looms,

but the square in the head isn't so square if you look closely. it is a diamond with a hole through the middle and it's what happens when this goes all the way through to the skirt. but notice the radiating fractures that extend out. we can tell that that came in with much more velocity because the energy is being dissipated in those radiating fractures. okay. the more recent events that have certainly influenced our work and how we are interpreting them from recent conflict. while i was working on this site was part of a team with the smithsonian institution that went in to do some human rights work in the former yugoslavia with the breakup into the smaller units in the '90s. we were asked to work in croatia

because they had had so many massive grave is coming out at the top of a just asked for our help in excavation and to help analyze these both co- mingled and severely decomposed remains. so, again mass graves of a very different sort but nonetheless, dealing with familiar features that we saw with the co- mingled individuals and of course we had oversight by the un come individuals with the un. working with them on how to excavate the graves and also how to deal with the masses of co- mingled bodies and try to get biological profiles from them. here you see something that looks like the body and here you can see there is a leg and here is a leg and here is a head and some arms.

what happened that we know now in yugoslavia is that many graves were exchanged for damaged the remains as the post went through. i've been given one minute i'm going to finish up. just to illustrate again some of the trauma. we didn't see much trauma eons ahead, but we saw extensive trauma in the grave which isn't surprising from the former yugoslavia. notice the shatter in the leg. something coming through very, very quickly. shrapnel wounds.

nice and clean. and the exit wowbtd through the top of the head. so this individual was down with his head bowed down and had been executed. the other thing we have taken back is postmortem events. my time is up. i'm going finish on this. is postmortem events bhap can happenbo